CONCEPT OF SCIENCE IN MAX WEBER

Abstract

In the social sciences, what is represented by concept, proposition, or law with regard to their respective research objects is a remarkably elemental, and yet final question, which always challenges us for solution, According to the standpoints taken in answering the question, one concept will give birth to such a variety of considerations that, when it is taken up for a joint discussion, the natural consequence is that the participants will be pitted against each other as if they were as many people from different planets. It is certainly true of a basic concept of ' price ' in political economy, for instance. To the so-called modern theorists it seems that ' price * is the most general and unified expression of the various phrases of economic life, and at the same time the common denominator of all things from which they start and to which they are reduced. The backgronnds of 'price', they think, are technique or the social relations of mankind as such of which essence could not be covered by economie life alone, and it is the circumstances presupposed by political economy as existing outside its own field. Standing upon this premise, it may be considered that political economy has only to pay attention to both mechanics of ' price ' and movement from ' price * to ' price VAnd it will naturally so happen that the very premise is left for consideration to the hands of other sciences such as science of techinique, sociology, and so on. To marxists, on the other hand, 'price' is an actual form of the social ' value ' of men engaged in the production of commodities. On One side, 'value' can not but project itself in the form of money, on that account the essence of ' value ' can be clarified through money and in which are found in a general and unified way the various phases of economic life. On the other side, however, so far as ' value ' assumes a special form of money, which is a social fetish, it is understood that the actual form of ' .value ' does not represent the essence of 'value' and accordingly the mechanics of 'price' are nothing more than an inverted form of the social relations of humanity as shown